Month April 2015

Potting up each April a host of favorite herbs is one of the highlights of my gardening year.

There are two main reasons I enjoy my annual herb-planting ritual:

Rather than planting herbs that I might actually use, I plant herbs that I simply like the look of, or whose lore I am particularly charmed by. (Almost two dozen of the 145 books I own about gardening are devoted to herbs, so although I’m no expert, over the years I’ve definitely read a lot about them.)

I usually buy most of my herbs on a much-anticipated annual expedition to several nurseries in the mountains of North Georgia that I make most Aprils with my sister Gayle, who lives in Blairsville and who is also an enthusiastic amateur gardener.

For at least a decade, I’ve been wanting to expand the number of herbs I grow. And as the 2015 planting season approached, I also decided this would be the year when I would finally replace with gravel the bed of ivy that I planted underneath my pots of herbs. In the twenty years since I had (foolishly) planted it, the ivy had gotten out of hand, and I could no longer deny that most of my herbs would fare better if I undergirded tjhem with sun-reflecting pea gravel rather than over a bed of pot-invading ivy.

So I spent several days in early April painstakingly uprooting the ivy and buying liners to contain the half-dozen bags of pea gravel I also purchased for two separate herb-pot areas. Amazingly, I had both beds ready before purchasing this year’s trove of herbs, and – equally surprisingly – I managed to pot up the herbs before the April monsoons commenced.

At which time I retreated indoors for a few days to read my most recently-acquired book about herbs, Madalene Hill’s and Gwen Barclay’s Southern Herb Growing (1989) and to re-read my copy of the equally excellent book by Rob Proctor and David Macke,Herbs in Pots (1999).

At some point while enjoying these books and waiting for the rains to cease, I realized I could double the number of my herb plantings if I moved to this part of my garden a semi-circular metal pot rack I was storing in my garden shed. So I did that.

Here’s the ivy-infested main part of the herb area before the April 2015 renovation:

Two views of what the two gravel-bedded portions of my garden devoted to my potted herbs it looks like now:

And here’s the newest addition to my herbarium, perched on a metal rack beneath the trellis against one of the house walls bordering the L-shaped area:

My next major long-put-off garden project: recycling the rafters from my old garden shed to construct raised beds on top of my paved driveway, so I can experiment with growing a few fruits or vegetables other than my already-potted tomatoes, peppers, and blueberries. Stay tuned!

Back in bitterly-cold February, when my friend Julia asked if I wanted to join her for her annual week-long camping trip to Cumberland Island she had scheduled this year for late March, it took me a few days to decide whether or not I wanted to go.

My most recent camping trip had been almost 40 years ago – ironically, a trip to Cumberland, when Julia was among the five of us that had somehow made the 5.5 hour trip from Atlanta in my VW Beetle. A photo of our circa-1978 camping crew on the ferry to Cumberland (Left to right: Julia Strong, Cathy Hope, Raven Wolfdancer, Cal Gough, Jim Struve): Although I’d done my share of camping before then, after the late-1970s trip to Cumberland, I’d sworn off camping, having concluded that standing in the rain trying to fry an egg over a sputtering campfire was never going to be my idea of fun. But I knew that taking up Julia’s invitation would be a perfect opportunity for us to re-connect (we’d lost track of each other when she had moved away from Atlanta decades ago), and I’m always tempted by any trip that includes the sight of ocean waves. Especially if it’s February when my annual bout of cabin fever and cold weather hatred is at its peak, and when the proferred trip has been scheduled for late March, before bug season swings into high gear.

The fact that my ancient tent and sleeping bag were packed away somewhere in the remotest corner of my attic turned out not to be an obstacle: my camping-enthusiast friend Randall offered to loan me his recently-bought eight-person extravaganza, plus a humongous new tarp (the better to avoid a repetition of the rain-in-the-frying-pan episode). Aiming to guarantee my sleeping comfort, I decided to take along the double-sized air bed I occasionally use for guests staying at my house, so there was no need for unearthing the sleeping bag.

As our departure date approached, I began wondering whether my long-standing qualms about re-exposing myself to the vividly-remembered rigors of camping – especially an entire week of it – would be trumped by the great conversations I expected to have with Julia, by a rare and welcome break in urban distractions and in my daily routine, and by the spectacular beauty of the semi-tropical environment we’d be camping in.

Reader, I had a good time!

Every hoped-for pleasure of the trip did in fact materialize, and the numerous meals Julie had planned for us tasted really good, as camp food often does – partly because of all the trouble it takes to prepare those meals without the usual kitchen mod cons (running water, efficient refrigeration, sterilized pots, serving dishes, and utensils). Another plus: the night before embarking for the island, and for lunch on the way back to Atlanta, Julia and I partook of some yummy fresh seafood at restaurants in the exceptionally quaint little port of St. Mary’s. Also memorable: the excellent campfires we created for the three of the nights of our stay when it wasn’t pouring down rain.

Not so pleasurable (besides the rainstorms):

The attack of the no-see-ums while waiting for the ferry to the island to depart. Sure enough, I didn’t see them as they methodically chowed down on my hands and forearms. I’ve always been a bug magnet, and the periodic itching was intense until it finally subsided a full week after our return to Atlanta (I looked like a recovering measles victim.) Next time: wear long sleeves no matter how balmy the weather, buy one of those neat hats with the builit-in mosquito netting, and take along a pair of gloves!

The fact that I had to stop reading when it got dark every night. I’m not used to turning in at 8 o’clock, certainly was never sleepy then, but I was afraid to of use my flashlight to read by, fearing the battery would run out before the week did. (And I did need that flashlight to last – among other things, I needed it for thwarting the racoons’ nightly raids on our campsite.) As it happened, I’d brought along to read on the trip three particularly absorbing books, so these nightly reading interruptions were really frustrating. Next time: pack a lantern!

The repeated schlepping of our gear all over creation.I had forgotten that camping on an island entails much loading and unloading: first, wedging everything into the car, then hauling it out of the car and across the parking lot onto the ferry dock, then from the dock onto the boat, then from the boat onto the dock at the island, then from there somehow loading everything onto a rolling cart to schlep it from the dock to the campsite a half-mile away, then unloading everything at the site – and then setting up the ingeniously-designed but still unwieldy tent (and the tarp) …and then, once the week is over, doing all of the above in reverse. Next time: take less stuff – fewer clothes, less food, fewer books.

Wedging into the tent an air mattress that’s too big for the tent’s door. After the laughable spectacle of Calvin blowing up a double-wide, three-foot-high airbed via the electric plug in the tiny campsite restroom (located probably a fifth of a mile from our campsite) came the equally hilarious spectacle of Calvin pulling the wider-than-the-path blown-up mattress through the jungle with the help of the rolling cart. (I felt like I was guiding a giant balloon down Fifth Avenue in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.) it took both Julie and me at least fifteen minutes to squeeze the bed through the door of the tent. Next time: take a smaller airbed!

These minor frustrations were far outweighed by the pleasant company and the gorgeous, exotic setting:

Cumberland is the largest of Georgia’s coastal islands, and the site of one of the few non-developed marine forests and pristine beaches on the entire eastern seaboard. Ninety-percent of the island is occupied by the National Park, and only 300 park visitors are allowed on the island at a time.

The place is full of history, and Julia was clever enough to book us both on a six-hour van-based “History and Heritage” tour whose personable guide was (like every Park ranger and volunteer) extremely knowledgeable about every historical era and all the local fauna and flora.

I attended all but one of he daily lectures at the camp headquarters given by the park rangers, and learned all sorts of interesting things about Cumberland.

So, all things considered, it was a great trip!

However, I was also very glad to get home – especially after we endured a massive traffic jam south of McDonough that we thought we’d never see the end of. After The Great Unpacking, I treated myself to the lengthiest hottest shower I’ve ever taken, having learned that I really can go a whole week without a shower when I need to.

Have I changed my tune about camping? I’m not sure. I do know that I am fonder than I imagined of conveniences like running water (especially hot running water) and copious, non-mobile kitchen storage. I do prefer spending time at the cabin in Blue Ridge to the rigors of any campsite, even one as stunning as the ones at Cumberland Island. And my next camping adventure will probably be a shorter one. But I’m glad I tried camping for an entire week, as that gave me an extended period of time to leave the tent up before facing the ordeal dismantling the dang thing. And I’m even gladder that I had such great company.

If you’ve never been to Cumberland, you really should try to get there, even if you don’t choose spend the night there. (And if you do want to camp there, expect a six-month wait for a campsite reservation. Cumberland is a popular destination for campers!)

Except for three photos of me that Julia snapped, I grabbed the following photos off the Internet, as other people’s photos were bound to be better than anything I might’ve taken myself. However, I’m posting here only photos of things I actually saw myself while on Cumberland; the Internet abounds with photos of areas of the island I didn’t get to.

The ferry one uses to get to Cumberland from St. Mary’s (for a long time the southernmost port of the U.S., back when Florida was still controlled by the Spanish):The blessed carts that awaited for us at the campground’s dock, used for schlepping our camping gear to the campsite a half-mile or so away:The signpost for our campground:

Schlepping our gear down the path to the campsite:

The entrancing and ubiquitous oak and palmetto forest canopy where we camped:The boardwalk at the edge of the forest that crosses the dunes to the beach: The dunes:A couple of unexpected beach companions (there are about 150 feral horses on the island):Plum Orchard, one of the island’s half-dozen Gilded Age mansions being restored (this one belonged to the Carnegies from Pittsburg; we got to tour its sumptuous interior, which included an indoor swimming pool and racket ball court):

One of the stops on our all-day van tour was the tiny African-American church at the top of the island, where JFK, Jr. got married:

Campsite visitors:

Waiting outside the rangers’ office for the ferry to arrive and carry us back to civilization:

Postscript: Camping is a refreshingly cheap way to travel! The entire week – including camping fees, the food (and ice) we bought, the costs of the ferry rides and the van tour, and meals at several restaurants on the way down and back to Atlanta – cost me $340, and I spent fully half of that for my swanky room at Emma’s Cottage House, a Bed & Breakfast in St. Mary’s, the night before we took the ferry to the island. And if you do your camping in a National Park (like Cumberland Island has been since 1977), did you know seniors can buy a National Park Pass for a mere $10?

Follow Blog via Email

Click the button below to receive an email notifying you of each new blogpost.

From Cal’s Commonplace Book

The Constant Reader

Books Read This Year

Updated February 20, 2019

“I continue to think of myself as someone who is essentially a reader—a man who takes a deep pleasure in good books, who views reading as a fine mode of acquiring experience, and who still brings the highest expectations to what he reads. By the highest expectations I mean that I am perhaps a naïve person who has never ceased to believe that books can change his life, and decisively so.” – Joseph Epstein (from Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives [1989], quoted by Patrick Kurp at his blog Anecdotal Evidence)

JUST FINISHED:

Asymmetry (2018) by Lisa Halliday

I read this award-winning debut novel for my book club. The book is devoted to two different sets of characters (and two different settings). Halliday is an excellent writer, but I couldn’t find myself caring too much about the fate of the main characters in the first story (involving a Manhattan-based novelist and his much younger mistress). The second set of characters (an Iraqi-American and his family and acquaintances) were also drawn very vividly, but what I appreciated the most about this part of the book was Halliday’s skillful insertion of the horrific damage caused to civilians by the U.S. government’s imperialistic venture in Iraq. The third part of the novel (an interview with the novelist featured in the first part of Asymmetry) seemed tacked on and unnecessary. I’d recommend this author, but not this book.

CURRENTLY READING (in addition to trying to keep up with the most recent issues of the planet’s two best magazines, The Sun and the New Yorker):

A Southern Garden (1942) by Elizabeth Lawrence

As William James Said: Extracts from the Published Writings of William James (1942) edited by Elizabeth Perkins Aldrich

BOOKS FINISHED EARLIER THIS YEAR:

An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town(2009) by David Farley

I ran across this book at a recent library book sale, and am so glad I did. Part travel diary, part detective story, part history, it has two things bound to capture my interest: it’s a chronicle of an American living for a year in a tiny Italian hilltop town for a year, intermingled with a dogged quest for understanding (and locating) a notorious holy relic. Who knew that the fervent veneration of Jesus’s circumcised foreskin (yes, you read that correctly!) had such a long and interesting career? Farley’s sense of humor and his scrupulous scholarship, together make this a delightful romp of a book – and a thoroughly entertaining case study of the absurdity (and lucrativeness) of religious cults. And I was happy to see, in Farley’s notes, his reference to another Italy-themed travelog I enjoyed reading years ago, Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the history of the World (2007).

In the Morning: Reflections from First Light (2006) by Philip Lee Williams

Like me, this book’s author is a “morning person.” Unlike me, he writes about his early morning walks, and this book is a sampling of the thoughts that those pre-dawn walks have provoked over the years. Williams is both a poet and a science writer, and his ruminations show that fact. Williams lives about 90 miles from where I do, so that was an added plus in my enjoyment of these essays.

Somewhere Near the End: A Memoir (2009) by Diana Athill

By happy coincidence, the same week that one of my author heroines, Diana Athill, died (at age 101), I discovered that I’d at some point purchased – but never got around to starting – a copy of Somewhere Near the End, now over eight years old. I eagerly plucked it from my bookshelf and spent most of the next three days devouring it. The adjectives in the blurbs excerpted from the book’s reviews are, for once, are spot-on: “remorseless and tender,” “a wisdom more ambient than aphoristic,” “refreshingly candid,” “fiercely intelligent…and never dull,” “unflinching,” “deals with growing old with bravery, humor and honesty,” “prose as clear and graceful as ever,” “brilliant; entirely lacking in the usual regrets [and] nostalgia.” “as unalarmed by the prospect of death as by the seeming meaninglessness of the universe,” “her easy-going prose and startling honesty are riveting”, “bracingly frank…joyful rather than grim.’ Or, to use the description supplied by the organization that gave this book its annual award for biography: “candid, detailed, charming, totally lacking in self-pity or sentimentality and, above all, beautifully, beautifully written.” If I were ever to embark on any writing project myself, I would aim to write with the precision, the honesty, and the humility of Diana Athill.

Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World(1988; updated 1997) by Tom Cowan

Brief and straightforward biographical sketches of over 40 lesbians and gay men who enriched the fields of art, literature, theater, music, science, social science, or philosophy. A bit like spending time reading a series of Wikipedia entries, I was often surprised at the author’s ability to clearly express why he’d chosen these particular worthies over the ones he omitted. In any case, I learned – in almost every bio – something new (to me) and important about celebrities I (mistakenly) thought I already knew a fair amount about.

Ultimate Questions (2016) by Brian Magee

I am not familiar with the Britain-based Magee’s earlier works, but am so glad he wrote this one and so glad I found it. (His earlier book, ThePhilosophy of Schopenhauer will be the next book by Magee that I will track down). One reviewer wrote about this book: “Magee writes clearly, without jargon, and he makes his case for profound agnosticism with considerable force.” Exactly so; in fact, this is probably the single most compelling book of modern philosophy I have ever read. It’s also one of the most eloquent and least pompous books of philosophy I have ever read. This is a book I will buy a copy of for the sheer pleasure of re-reading its arrestingly clear (and mostly irrefutable) sentences.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (2018) by James Clear

This book’s bringing together of what scientists and psychologists know about habit formation (the making of new ones, the breaking of old ones) is not only useful, but entertainingly presented. Because of the author’s engaging style and his incorporation of findings from multiple post-behaviorism fields (like neurolinguistic programming), it took a while for me to realize that the book is largely a recapitulation of what I’d learned in college (50 years ago!) about operant conditioning. Still, there were things about how habits are formed and how they persist that I needed to be reminded of, especially some of the counter-intuitive features of habit formation, and I am using some of the author’s tips to create some better habits in 2019 – and to get rid of a few undesirable ones.